Month: August 2010

The next book in my stack of books to read was “The Teacher’s Briefcase” by Hiromi Kawakami. I read the french translation. I book tells the relationship between a retired teacher and a student that became adult. I really liked the fine style and the gorgeous descriptions. In my opinion the translation work was not good.

One event I never missed while living in Zürich is the Bünzli in Winterthur. This is the only demo-party in Switzerland, and always fun. This year was a little bit special, as it was the last time at this particular location, the Kirchgemeindehaus in Winterthur. As usual, the most awaited demos where the overhead project (OHP) ones, with lots of complicated moire effects, chemistry and flames. This year the most exciting thing for me was that Angel from Calodox released a game: Biolite. This is basically a rewrite of the 96K game released at the 2006 breakpoint, this time with nice 3D graphics.

The game features a 3D planet where plants fight for dominance. The goal of the game is to expand on the surface of the planet, tree with many leafs collect the sun’s energy, while plants with fruits let you store it. Killing the opponent’s plant requires energy, and so does planting need seeds. The game also lets you customise the planet’s structure and appearance. The game uses the irrlicht library and runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. I will put a link to the various binary files once the final version is released.The files for the released version can be downloaded from the bünzli site.

Recently I am increasingly listening to trip-hop music. While I did some entries about some of the albums I bought, I realize I often buy only a few tracks I like, and writing about a single track seems like a waste of time, so instead of trying to explain why I like various tunes, I created, as an experiment, an iTunes iMix called 夢 (dream) with various tunes I like. Normally, this should let people listen to the previews of the tracks easily.

Jass is the most famous card-playing game in Switzerland. Some say it could be the ancestor of the US game of Pinochle. In the east part of the country, people play with cards that are different from those of the rest of Europa. There is no queen, but two jacks: a knave and a squire. The colors are also different, there a no hearts or spades, instead the four families are bells, flowers, shields and acorn. I find those cards beautiful.

The media presence at the Street Parade this year was quite strong, after all the attention of the accident at the love parade, but there was not major accident, one guy fell of a love mobile, and a two other got into a fight. Compared to the size of the event (650’000 people this year), things went quite smoothly. On the other hand, the gods of weather did not, this year again, smile on the parade. Somewhere after the 10th love mobile drove by bellevue, the clouds stopped being threatening, and it rained.

Besides the weather, you could feel that the city tried to constrain the party to the parade’s path: there was no scene inside the railway station, and all activity stopped at midnight. This year, I went to one after: Energy at Hallenstadion. This is a huge party that takes place inside a large hall designed by Bruno Giacometti. This year, there were around 10’000 people at the party. We arrived just in time for Tiësto, sadly we missed David Guetta. Two things struck me, first 8 bit sounds are definitely fashionable, second, the demo-scene had a visible influence on the VJ work. Some of VJ elements reminded me of the Mylène Farmer concert I went some time ago. In fact, Tiësto played one track of her. The party was nice, but I think going to the parade and then to an after is just beyond my energy levels after a week of work.

On a laptop running Mac OS X 10.6, you can draw kanji with your fingers. In system preferences, activate the “trackpad writing” for chinese, select the pinyin keyboard and press ”Shift + Control” and the drawing interface appears.

Outliers is one of those books I kept hearing praise of in the most varied circumstances, from colleagues to the newsletter I get from the Aikidō club, so it was time that I read it to figure out what it was all about. I’m usually wary of books that have “#1 international bestseller” written on the cover, but in this case, I think the praise is deserved, and I hope this was not only a book that was sold a lot, but also a book that was read a lot.

The catch phrase of the book is “the story of success” which is somehow misleading, because this is not a historical book. It is basically an essay about the circumstances of success. The author asserts that each time somebody is successful, the same story is told: the person was very gifted, worked hard, and the context beyond the direct family circle is ignored. This books looks into the context behind successes and shows two things: first that being gifted is not enough, a lot of work is necessary for reaching mastery, the author mentions 10’000 hours of work; secondly, the book shows many factors play a huge role in a success story, some of them circumstantial, some social, some cultural.

something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body

a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample

While claiming that cultural background has an impact on the way people work might not be exactly politically correct, at the same time if you ever worked abroad or in an international company, it is quite obvious. I found the book refreshing because it tried to look at the issue in a constructive way. He also argues that being from a certain culture can be both and advantage and a handicap, depending on the circumstance.

One reason I like this book is that it has a good, broad overview, of many ideas on success, with a few practical examples. It also structured some thoughts, some observations I had made in my own life. When I lived in Japan, I was struck about the complexity of rice paddies, and it made sense that such a form of agriculture requires more cooperation, better structure than what is needed in western fields. The book goes into that exact subject, but with other conclusions. The 10’000 hours ideas also jives with my experience with computer programming, there is no such thing as a genius, but there are people with a lot of experience.